


reckless

by stupidsecretthings



Category: Bon Appétit Test Kitchen RPF, Chef RPF
Genre: F/M, One Night Stand, brad and claire are really bad at communicating, but they work it out in the end!!, sauci has a cameo, the rest of the test kitchen is sort of there in the background
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-20
Updated: 2019-11-20
Packaged: 2021-02-16 09:20:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21505546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stupidsecretthings/pseuds/stupidsecretthings
Summary: claire saffitz does not do reckless things. except that one time that she did.or: the brad and claire had a one night stand in boston au that nobody asked for.
Relationships: Brad Leone/Claire Saffitz
Comments: 25
Kudos: 97





	reckless

**Author's Note:**

> Okay... this is my first foray into RPF (and writing in general for a while), and bro, it's difficult! That being said, I can only apologise if Brad and Claire don't seem quite themselves in this fic, it's been a journey and I've tried oh so hard to keep them true to themselves (I'm just not so sure I succeeded... whoopsies).
> 
> Based off the concept: "Brad is the only thing that makes Claire reckless."
> 
> I hope you enjoy and can forgive me for my errors, friends :)

**_Boston, 2008._ **

“I don’t—” she starts, but gets cut off by the involuntary way her breath catches in her throat when he does _that thing_ on her pulse-point with his lips and teeth. They’re walking (stumbling) backwards in Claire’s small room, all lips and hands and teeth as they teeter towards the bed in small, frantic increments. 

— — —

_From the second Claire saw Brad she could see scattered energy bursting at the seams; he was all bright smiles and amiable conversation with strangers and he was always moving in some way. She found him fascinating, just the kind of non-creepy (she hopes) people watching to decompress while she has a few drinks. She isn’t normally one to drink alone, tends to be more of a social drinker, especially with how much time she spends studying— but it’s been a rough few weeks, and an even rougher day, and she was hit earlier by how much she suddenly needed a drink._

_Brad was a ray of sunshine in the small, humid college bar. And he was one that Claire couldn’t quite figure out. She’d been dragged to this bar often enough with friends, and yet she’d never seen him (and, she definitely would’ve noticed him if they’d been in the same room, he has a personality that can’t be ignored)._

— — —

Claire’s torn out of her thoughts when Brad growls, low and deep and from the back of his throat as he rolls his hips against hers and presses her into the nearest wall, lifting her slightly and gripping under her thighs, which she instinctively wraps around his waist. “Fuck, Claire,” he murmurs, his hands gripping slightly tighter as she kisses the column of his neck. Claire’d be worried about Brad leaving bruises on her thighs if she weren’t so lost under the fog of pleasure that’d settled over her. 

“Brad,” she whispers, pulling back to look into his _blue_ eyes; he meets her stare head-on, all of his frenetic energy focusing on her and she almost can’t cope with the intensity of it. He understands what she doesn’t say, and, still with her legs around his waist like she weighs nothing, turns to her bed and throws her onto it. Unbidden, she lets out a surprised squeal, bouncing on the bed as she lands, and looks with amusement dancing in her dark eyes as Brad struggles his way out of his shirt and throws it off to the side. 

— — —

_Claire’d been at the bar for about half an hour, and was already on her second drink of (what she was sure would be many, many more of) the night, when Brad came up to her. Although she’d spent a good 90% of those thirty minutes watching Brad from the corner of her eye, of course he’d come up to her when she’s not expecting it._

_“Hey,” a loud — though she suspected he was trying to be a little quieter — voice came from her left, followed by the quick brush of a hand on her shoulder, before the person pulled it away, as if they hadn’t intended to have touched her. Claire let out a startled ‘ooh-’, her body jerking a little as a startled expression fell over her features. “Oh, hey, sorry about that didn’t mean to scare ya.”_

_Claire huffed out a soft laugh at the suddenly bashful looking gentle giant stood in front of her and smiled, sincere and wide, surprising even herself. “It’s no problem. Hi.”_

_If possible, the man in front of her seemed even more exuberant at her warm greeting, his entire face lighting up, bouncing lightly on the balls of his feet. Claire couldn’t help but notice how he as practically vibrating with energy, his eyes (without him noticing, she thought) bouncing around the room, taking in all the stimuli he possibly could as quickly as he could, and yet Claire never fully felt his attention stray away from her. “Hi. I’m Brad. Leone. Nice to meet ya.” He stuck out his hand, Claire giggled (Claire Saffitz does_ not _giggle, but clearly Brad Leone is the exception to the rule), and slotted her hand into his huge one, dwarfing it._

_“Claire,” she said, and paused slightly before adding, “Saffitz,” just as he had done._

— — —

“Oh, Jesus— Claire!” Brad gasped, laughing slightly as his sentence tapered off, one of his arms somehow stuck in her shirt. Claire couldn’t help but join in with Brad’s laughter, his unbridled joy being infectious, and they both lay on Claire’s tiny dorm room bed giggling. They somehow flopped slightly, both of them slumping, Brad’s arm still stuck (Claire still baffled as to just _how_ he’d managed that), and both of them breathless. “Hey, Saffitz,” Brad says, clearly trying to be quiet, but failing, as it comes out just as loud as his speech usually does. Claire chuckles under her breath and lifts her head from Brad’s chest to look up at him, her hair forming a curtain around her face as she meets Brad’s stare. 

It’s intense, deep blue on dark brown and her breath catches in her throat at the intimacy of the whole thing. She shifts, suddenly somewhat on edge and Brad smiles a soft, lopsided smile at her that seems so out of character for him and somehow at the same time so _Brad_. She freezes a little, the soft smile playing on her lips stuttering as her brain switches back on at that thought; the thought that she doesn’t really know anything about Brad, just that he struggles with his speech sometimes and that she met him _four hours ago_. A chorus of ‘oh God’s’ starts up Claire’s mind, her entire body tensing and Brad senses the shift in Claire from miles away. “Oh, whoa, Saffitz! You don’t have to overthink this or nothin’. I swear to ya if ya wanna stop, Claire, then _boom_ , stopped, done-zo. We don’t do anything you don’t wanna Claire, promise.”

Claire smiles at him, grateful and slightly awed by this wonderful man in front of (read: underneath) her. This man who’d lit up an entire bar, her entire shitty week, just by being in it. She smiled to herself, thinking, this Brad Leone is something special, and resigns herself to the fact that all she’ll ever have with him is the night. Because, he’s not a Boston local, that much she’d deduced and later had confirmed by him himself, and he’s heading back to New Jersey tomorrow morning. _If a night is all I can have_ , she decides, _a night is what I’ll get._

— — —

_“Oh my God, Brad,” she groans on a laugh, throwing her head down onto the table — because they’ve since graduated from the bar and stools to an actual booth, Brad sitting across from her with a shit-eating grin on his face._

_“What?!” He guffaws right back, happiness alight in his blue, blue eyes, “You’re tellin’ me you’re_ not _worried about the illuminati somehow gettin’ ahold of all your information?”_

_“Brad—” she starts, having to stop to let out a chuckle and to hold up her left hand in a ‘hold-on-a-minute’ way, “—no normal person is worried about that.”_

_“Whoever said we were normal, huh, Saffitz?” he jibes back, and she has to fight back a blush as her heart flutters at the endearing way he calls her Saffitz, sometimes. God, she’s only known this man about an hour and he’s already under her skin. She’s so screwed. Brad, being Brad, moves swiftly on, completely unbothered by (or just not noticing — probably the latter, if she’s honest) her internal monologue. “No, no, think about it right. What if the illuminati already has all of our information, like passports, addresses… all that shit, right? How the hell would we know about it?”_

_Claire laughs, again, just barely resisting the urge to turn her head towards the nearest mirror and look into it as if she were Jim Halpert from The Office. “I guess we wouldn’t… does it really matter though, Brad?”_

_“‘Course it matters, Claire!” he retorts, the words practically exploding out of him, volcano of energy that he is. “What happens if one day you get home and bam!” He thrusts his hands outward on the ‘bam!’ to really emphasise the word and her eyes light up even further in amusement. “Someone’s stolen your life— the illuminati!”_

_“Wha— no, Brad! That would just_ not _happen!”_

— — —

Claire has to start laughing when she realises, much to Brad’s confusion. All he really does is raise an eyebrow at her while her entire body shakes with the force of her laughter, her face red and tears gathering in her eyes. “What’s going on there, Saffitz, huh? In that ole noodle of yours?” he asks, an uncharacteristic sheepishness lingering behind the words that halts her laughter just enough to allow her to respond, not liking that _Brad_ , of all people, is _nervous_. 

“Sorry, sorry—” she starts, still catching her breath, “It’s just— I just had a mini-crisis half-naked with you in my dorm room while your arm is stuck in my shirt. It’s… not what I thought would be happening when I woke up this morning.” At that, Brad, too, let out a hearty laugh that rumbled straight through him, laughing—Claire imagined—as he did most things: with everything he had. 

As their amusement began to fizzle away, all that was left between them was Claire’s shirt (which Brad was _still_ stuck in, somehow), Brad’s unbuttoned-though-not-unzipped pants, their underwear and the tension that crackled between them as they held each other’s gaze. Claire isn’t sure who initiated the next kiss, thinks it may have just been both of them all at once, but they crash together and start blindly pushing and pulling, fumbling as they had when they first stumbled into Claire’s dorm room earlier. 

Brad, finally unstuck, is tugging at the hem of Claire’s shirt, trying to get it off without tangling himself in it; Claire, taking pity on Brad (or maybe is just as impatient) leans back from the kiss — at which Brad audibly groans at the loss of contact, whispers “Jesus Saffitz,” at her movements — and smirks while pulling her shirt over her head in one smooth motion and throwing it away, uncaring towards where it landed because all she could think was _Brad, Brad, Brad_. 

Their lips fused together again, Brad’s hands finally wandering over bare skin with nothing to inhibit him and Claire could only groan and gasp at Brad’s undivided attention on her. His hands skimmed her ribcage, pressed into her hips and pulled them closer to his, brushing against him _just there_ , making both of them stutter out a breath and flicker their eyes shut. Claire was panting, her forehead pressed against Brad’s as his hands roved over her back, stopping at the clasp of her bra and holding between two fingers. He paused, “This okay?” he asked, and God, if she wasn’t already about to have sex with him his consideration towards her feelings would get him there anyway. 

“Yes,” she breaths heavily, “God, yes. Brad,” she pleads, “off.”

— — —

_Claire and Brad had been sat in their booth for well over two hours, and it was only when Brad nodded pointedly at her drink and said, “You wan’ another? Next round’s on me, Saffitz.” that Claire realised she’d only had two drinks since she’d gotten to the bar, one of which took her about twenty minutes to finish and the second took her about two hours. She smiled, nodded, pushed her empty glass towards Brad who wandered towards the bar with it, and considered that Brad Leone was exactly the distraction she hadn’t known she’d needed when she walked into the bar this evening._

_Claire also realised that she was very attracted to this man. He was leaning over the bar, carrying a conversation with about four random guys all at once (she could never), all the while grinning and laughing and looking absolutely sinful. His tanned forearms were exposed by the shirt he’d rolled over to his elbows, and the pants he was wearing, while loose enough to look comfortable, accentuated his ass in a way that made her gaze zero in on it (what? She’s only human and when a man like Brad Leone has his back to you… it’s just what anyone would do. Right?)._

_All too soon but not soon enough, Brad was back, sliding into his place in the booth across from her. He nudged her foot with his foot, grinned a wide, goofy grin that had her matching him and then slid her drink across the table to her. “Beer okay?” he asked, looking earnestly at her._

_She nods, feels the corners of her lips tug further upwards. “Beer’s perfect. Thanks Brad.”_

— — —

They’re almost completely naked now, and as Brad’s gaze flickers over her entire body, that frenetic energy back as if he can’t quite decide which parts of her he wants to look at or admire first and she has to flush under the attention, not quite used to it. She blushes from the tips of her ears to the tops of her breasts and she watches Brad’s eyes get drawn to her chest and linger there, his tongue poking at his lips. 

“Brad,” she whines, rolling her hips against his, getting impatient and needing a distraction from the way he looks at her before she catches feelings for a man she won’t see beyond tomorrow. Brad lets out a guttural half-groan, half-growl that seems to surprise even him, pulling from the back of his throat. Brad’s head drops to her shoulder, his hot breath coming out in pants across her body and goosebumps rise all over, a shiver dancing up Claire’s spine. She nips at his earlobe in encouragement. 

Brad looks up, the blue of his eyes almost completely eclipsed by the dilated black of his pupils, arousal thrumming in his veins and a look she can only really describe as _hungry_ in his eyes. He tightens the grip her thighs have on his and flips them in one smooth motion, him hovering over her. She gasps, squeaks in surprise and then moans into Brad’s mouth as he kisses her with a passion she supposes she shouldn’t be surprised by given that she’s seen how he gives everything he has.

Brad’s energy isn’t divided at all anymore, his eyes pick one spot and stick with it, admire it, his focus doesn’t fracture and splinter off. Every atom in Brad’s body is focusing on her right now, and she can’t let herself think about it because she’ll overthink and ruin it, she knows she will, so she tilts her neck, gives Brad more access as he licks and nips and sucks his way up it. She tightens her thighs around his waist, grinds herself down on him and forces herself to be lost in the moment. 

Claire turns her brain off for possibly the first time in her life. She feels reckless and brave and she channels that power that she feels from that into everything Brad is doing to her and with her.

Claire loses herself in the moment. 

— — —

_Another hour or so passes, Claire’s honestly lost track of how much time it’s been at this point. All she knows is she’s spent a good portion of what was going to be a lonely, depressing evening of wallowing, talking and laughing and joking and, dare she say it,_ flirting _with a handsome, funny man named Brad Leone. Claire’s 90% sure he’s a little out of her league. Sure, he doesn’t attend Harvard or anything, but he’s so outgoing, so relaxed, probably has a million friends from all over the place, is happy to just live in the moment… Claire dreams of finding that level of contentment but she’s nowhere near there, and Brad’s only like a year older than her or something (it’s all a little hazy, they only met a few hours ago; she’s pretty sure he’s 22 but the bar was really loud when he said it, so she’s not really sure. Surprisingly enough, she finds she doesn’t really care that she doesn’t know how old he is.)_

_“No no no no no,_ listen _, Claire, I’m tellin’ ya, this dog was as big as a freakin’ donkey! I mean it! Majestic fuckin’ creature, seriously, Saffitz. He was_ gorgeous _. So cute, and so friendly, too.”_

_“Brad,” Claire laughs, “I believe you. You’ve been talking about this dog for like half an hour.” She doesn’t say that the golden retriever he’s describing sounds a lot like him to her._

_Brad feigns an affronted look. “He was a great dog, Claire!”_

_Claire chuckles, shaking her head fondly at the man sitting opposite her and then stares at the table for a second. She’s twirling her black hair around her index finger, a nervous habit she picked up when she was younger, and she’s sure when she looks up she must have a weird expression on her face. But she doesn’t care, she’s in a ‘fuck-it’ kind of mood, and she’s never in that kind of a mood; she’s had a few drinks, but not too many, and so she decides: fuck it, what’s one reckless decision amongst all the responsible ones? Nothing, right?_

_“Hey, Brad?” she says, an abrupt end to one conversation and beginning to another. Brad looks momentarily stunned but rolls with the punches._

_“Yeah Claire?”_

_“You wanna come over to my place?”_

_Brad looks speechless for a second then grins, stands, takes her hand and leads her out of the bar. He kisses her for the first time with her back pressed against the cool brick of the bar they just left. He mumbles, “lead the way, Saffitz,” against her lips, and they couldn’t stop touching each other in some capacity the whole way back to Claire’s room._

— — —

The next morning, Claire wakes up alone. Her sheets are twisted around her body and they smell like Brad. Brad who, she groggily realises, is not in her tiny dorm room bed with her. Her eyes flicker open, slowly, the light in the room dimmed by the curtains she doesn’t remember closing. She blinks a few times, stretches, tries to shake herself awake a little. She turns to the side and sees a bag and cup on her desk. 

Standing, she realises she’s still naked; realises that she still aches in places where muscles hadn’t been used before last night for longer than she’d wish to admit. She huffs out a laugh at that, rolls her shoulders to work out a kink at the base of her neck from how she’d slept and picks up an item of clothing from the floor to throw over herself. She freezes when she realises too late just what she’s put on. Immediately she’s engulfed by the scent of _Brad_. The same one that lingered on her sheets but increased, tenfold. The sleeves of the hoodie she’s accidentally stolen (is it really stealing if he _left_ it here?) go beyond her fingertips and the hem falls at mid-thigh. It’s huge on her, though she’s unsurprised by that given the height and build of Brad. Instead of taking off the hoodie, however, and hiding it somewhere so she can forget the one night she did something she would never otherwise do, she keeps it on. In fact, when she’s done with it, she’ll just hang it up with all the rest of her clothes and probably wear it from time to time. 

She continues towards her desk, her arms wrapped around herself for warmth (was it this cold last night? She hadn’t noticed if it was) and stops short at what she sees. Brad’s left a paper bag from the bakery down the street (her _favourite_ ), a coffee with packets of sugar and milk surrounding it, and a note scrawled on scrap paper in messy, though legible, handwriting (besides, she doesn’t think hers is much better). She smiles fondly, a little wistfully now it’s over, at the little doodles at the bottom of the page that catch her eye, one of a dog she thinks is meant to be a golden retriever, and her heart clenches slightly. 

_Claire,_

_You looked so peaceful sleeping that I didn’t want to wake you up, but I also didn’t want to leave you without sustenance after what we got up to last night_ (she chortles a little at that) _so I grabbed you a slice of pie from that bakery down the street. I know it’s kind of early to be eating pie but, believe me, you already burned off the calories you’re about to eat ;)_

_I woulda loved to have stayed longer, Saffitz, but there’s a limit to how many nights a guy can crash on his friends couch, even if he used one up spending the night with a pretty lady. I also got you a coffee and cream and sugar and stuff, I didn’t know how you took your coffee so I just got some of everything so you can have it however you normally do._

_Shoot for the stars, Saffitz. Use your big noodle to do great things._

_Thank you for a fantastic night, Claire._

_Brad Leone._

Claire can only smile at the note. She thinks he’s being a little dramatic, they only slept together; they had a one night stand, and yet, Brad’s note feels intimate, like it was _so much more_ than that. She shakes her head, forces herself to stop smoothing her fingertips over the edges of the paper because, she notices with a little bitterness, Brad hadn’t left a number, so she had no way to contact him. It _can’t_ have meant that much to him, he would’ve left a way for her to contact him. She lets out a small, shaky breath and finds her footing again. She pushes the note further onto the desk, away from her, focuses on her coffee, putting her cream and sugar into it, sweet tooth that she is. 

When she takes a sip, it finally registers that the coffee’s still pretty warm. He must have left pretty recently, and she chances a look at the time. 09:07. She sighs slightly; Brad’s train was at nine, he’d mentioned as much the previous evening and the area he said his friend lived was pretty close by, and on the way to the station, so Brad could only really have left about half an hour earlier. Claire huffed a little, breathing in the scent of _Brad_ on the hoodie one last time before shaking herself out of it. 

She needed to get Brad Leone out of her system.

Claire ate her slice of pie — and enjoyed every second of it, obviously, it’s _pie_ — then, pulled off Brad’s hoodie and got changed into her running gear. 

She spent the rest of the day pointedly ignoring the ache Brad had left behind. 

— — —

Every now and then, Brad Leone would spring into Claire’s mind. 

She carried his words with her, ‘Shoot for the stars, Saffitz’, kept them close to her chest when she took the leap and went to culinary school in Paris, still unsure about the direction she wanted to take her life in. She still wore his hoodie from time to time, wore it when she needed comfort, and although it had long since stopped smelling of him, she still found something soothing in wearing it, the huge, faded fabric hanging loosely from her limbs. 

Sometimes she’d think she’d seen him, but would always chase the feeling away. Brad Leone was in her life for one night, and she had to let it go. 

  
As the years passed, she shoved that night out of her mind, forcing herself to forget. Eventually, Brad Leone was another distant memory, was how she’d gotten that massive hoodie that she wore sometimes, was how that note she didn’t have it in herself to get rid of had found its way into her purse, was the one reckless thing she’d done. 

Eventually, Brad Leone faded into the background. 

— — —

**_New York, 2013._ **

Claire jolts awake, wrapping her oversized hoodie tightly around her, taking a few deep breaths. She’ll be fine, right? Everything will be fine. It’s just a new job. 

A really good job. One she really wants to do well in. 

She’d aced culinary school like she aces everything, academia and school always being something she’d been good at. But doing her masters in culinary history had just made her miss cooking, look back on it with a gripping nostalgia that had her cooking skill-heavy meals and baking intricate pastries even when she was exhausted from school. Cooking was always a form of work for her, but a rewarding one. A work she _loved_. And restaurant work just… it wasn’t for her. To put it more plainly: she hated it; hated the repetitive chopping of the same thing over and over, the sweltering heat and stress of the kitchen and the pressure to get everything exact every time. 

Claire was too clumsy in the kitchen for restaurant work. 

So, what was left? Food media. She researched it like she’d researched culinary schools and decided that it was what she really wanted to do. At least, she really wanted to try. 

And then she’d seen the advertisement for a recipe tester at Bon Appétit. The interview had gone well enough, she’d thought, and she’d met a few people that she thinks she’d work well with. Carla, for one. She was all smiles and struck Claire as the sort that would mother everyone in the test kitchen she worked at and Claire was struck by how much she’d like the unwavering support she imagined Carla would offer her coworkers. 

She got the job. She’d had the most nerve-wracking phone conversation of her life with the editor-in-chief of the magazine himself, practically shaking the entire and then vibrating with anticipatory joy when she was told “you got the job”. 

Now she just had to actually _do_ that job. 

She’s just had a nightmare, and her hands are still shaking slightly from it. She’d caused a fire her first day on the job and everyone hated her already, her boss frowning at her as he issued her a warning for reckless behaviour. Claire Saffitz wasn’t reckless. 

She has to force herself to get up and moving before her mind strays to that one time she _was_ reckless, because then she really will be distracted enough to cause a fire her first day on the job. She gets changed, pulling off the huge hoodie with fabric that had faded and thinned with use in the five years she’d had it and swapping it for her running clothes. 

Claire runs for an hour before she heads back to her new apartment for a shower. She feels refreshed when she’s showered, the run and cascading hot water leaving her feel like a whole new person and she thinks she might just be alright. She uses the same route she used the day she had her interview and gets to the offices with time to spare. 

Claire makes it to the office floor of BA with fifteen minutes until she actually has to be there. She glances around the large, open-space room. She sees all of the cubicles, the open, airy feel of the room and the relative emptiness of it. She’d been told Bon Appétit kept a relatively relaxed work atmosphere but she hadn’t quite expected this. Everyone was in pretty casual clothing, mostly jeans, t-shirts and jackets from what she could see, and the people who actually were in the office (there weren’t many, she thought most people either weren’t in work yet or they were in the test kitchen a few floors down).

She gets to Adam Rapoport’s office and waits there, wringing her hands nervously (now that it was the only thing she had to think about, her anxiety over the new job had come roaring back). A laugh suddenly bursts across the office floor, and Claire freezes momentarily, cocks her head to the side slightly as she tries to place it because she _knows_ that laugh. She feels the laugh wash over here, a hazy memory trying to fight its way to the surface and she groans slightly under her breath because it isn’t quite at the forefront of her brain but she’s heard it before, she’s sure she has. 

Then her new boss comes around the corner and sees her waiting, smiles warmly at her and invites her into his office. She forces the laugh out of her mind, besides, she’ll probably find out at some point who it belongs to and that will be that. 

“So,” Adam says, clapping his hands with a wide smile as he motions for her to sit. “First day on the job. Nervous?”

Claire smiles a little, rubs her hands together. “A little,” she replies, “But mostly excited. I love to cook and that’s pretty much what this job is.”  
  
Adam’s smile grows wider. “Well, I’d hate to keep you in suspense. I’ll show you down to the test kitchen and then, unfortunately, I have a meeting. But I’m leaving you in the very capable hands of our test kitchen manager, and he’ll show you the ropes. That sound good?”

Claire nods. 

They make their way down, making amiable chit-chat as they go. Adam explains a little more extensively what her role entails, tells her that Carla (do you remember Carla? She was on the interviewing board. Oh, you do? Fantastic!) will help her get into the swing of things and that she’ll have to get her ID done, but that he’s sure he already told someone to show her how to get that done. When they reach the floor, Adam uses his pass to let them in and the second they cross the threshold Claire hears _that laugh_ again, and immediately she’s seized by the intensity of the unknown memory that’s fighting so desperately to reach the front of her mind. 

“Brad!” Rapoport shouts across the test kitchen, several heads turning towards them, and then immediately away from them as though that’s a regular occurrence (it crosses her mind that it possibly is a regular occurrence). She sees the back of a head pop up from behind a station, the person’s neck craning to get a look at Adam and giving, seemingly having remembered that they’re not an owl and can’t turn their neck 180°, and then standing up. Immediately, she notices the height of the person. They’re tall. Super tall; 6’4” if she had to guess. And then the hat. They’re wearing a baseball cap on backwards, a logo from some place or another on the back of it and curly brown hair underneath. 

Then the person turns around and starts walking towards them, and Claire watches them recognise her. It happens in stages. First, he freezes, his entire body stopping all motion, eyes focused solely on her. Then, he lets out a deep breath and she sees his eyes light up in recognition. Finally, he starts moving towards them again with slower, more stilted steps, every movement etched in shock and disbelief. Claire shifts, uncomfortable with his unwavering gaze, and it isn’t until Brad’s slightly closer to her and Adam that she has a similar moment of realisation because _holy shit_ it’s Brad Leone. 

It’s _Brad_ Brad. Her Brad. Brad whose hoodie she wears when she’s nervous and can’t sleep. Brad whose handwriting she’ll find on a piece of paper she’s had in her purse for _five years_.

He looks a little older (well, duh). He has facial hair now, which is mostly why it took her so long to recognise him and his shoulders had gotten a little broader, him filling out his clothes in a way he seemed a little too lanky to do when he was in his early twenties. After Claire’s immediate internal string of “holy shit”s, her next thought is that Brad looks good. Too good. _Sinfully_ good. Her mouth goes dry as she pictures the Brad she’d met five years ago but with the slightly larger build that he has now. It takes her a good few seconds for her to realise that _her boss_ is talking. 

“Alright, Claire Saffitz, I’d like you to meet Brad Leone, our test kitchen manager, and Brad I’d like you to meet Claire, our new recipe tester. I’ve got to go but I trust you can show her the ropes, Brad?”

Brad doesn’t answer, still staring at her with a dumbstruck expression on his face and she has to duck her head and look at the floor to hide her responding blush. “Huh?” He physically jerks as he comes back to himself, “Yeah, yeah. I can show Saffitz here the ropes. No problem.”

Claire, chancing a glance back up, sees a momentary confusion flash across Rapoport’s face that disappears as quickly as it appeared and then he’s smiling a broad smile, clapping Brad on the back and shouting a fleeting “Bye, guys!” to the entire test kitchen. 

Now left alone, Brad and Claire enter into an awkward silence. Claire shuffles her feet, nervously wringing her hands together again and biting her bottom lip. Brad, for his part, is looking everywhere all at once, somehow simultaneously observing the test kitchen and observing her in that way that she’s never known anyone except Brad Leone be able to do. After what feels like much longer a period of time than Claire is certain it is, Brad breaks the silence. 

“So,” he says with just a little too much enthusiasm, clapping his hands together. “You, uh, want a tour of the ole test kitchen then, Saffitz?”

Claire tries to match him as he continues on as if they haven’t met before— as if they haven’t _slept_ _together_ before— honestly, she does. But she _can’t_. Claire Saffitz isn’t Brad Leone and she needs time to process big moments like the one that was just slammed down upon her. Then she’s struck with the thought that Brad’s acting like this is no big deal because to him, this _is_ no big deal. Their night together really was just that; a night. It’s over now so why _shouldn’t_ they have a normal working relationship? It’s been five years for God’s sake. Claire sucks in a deep, calming breath and as she exhales forces a mask to slip over her face and steel to slip into her gaze. 

“Yeah, Brad,” she sighs, “Lead the way.”

— — —

Brad and Claire continue to act as if nothing had ever happened between them for months. Their working relationship is strained at best and it doesn’t take the rest of the test kitchen long to figure that out and give Brad and Claire a wide berth when it looked like either one could snap at the other. 

Claire _hates_ it. She hates that every time she sees Brad she gives him a strained smile that he returns and they ignore each other for the rest of the day, hates that even though she should be following Brad’s lead and completely ignoring him, she _can’t_. More often than Claire would be willing to admit she finds herself staring at Brad from afar, watching his hands flex around a knife or imagining the way the muscles in his back would ripple when he stretches his arms above his head. She is undeniably attracted to him and she hates that she is. 

She especially hates that when she’s had a rough day, it’s still Brad’s hoodie that she puts on to calm herself and quiet her loud thoughts. 

— — —

One day, three months into Claire’s employment at the test kitchen, everything changes. 

She has to stay late, one of the recipes she’s testing having a deadline of nine tomorrow morning to have been tested with a particularly temperamental bread dough that she needs to babysit while it proves and stick close by while it’s in the oven. 

She’s done this once or twice before, but was never the last chef in the kitchen. The first time she’d left with Carla, and the second with Andy. So, expecting as she was to be alone, she is understandably startled when a loud crash sounds from the walk-in. After peeling herself off the ceiling, she walks towards the walk-in quickly, concerned that someone she hadn’t realised was still around was hurt, and froze when she saw Brad muttering to himself as he picked up the sheet trays he’d dropped. 

“Jesus, Brad!” she exclaimed, without really thinking about who she was talking to, without remembering that her and Brad were not friends; were forcibly indifferent to each other. “You scared the crap out of me!” 

Brad was, reasonably, stunned when Claire spoke to him so casually, as though they were two good friends. Brad supposes they could have been once, but since she’d started working at the test kitchen they’d barely said five words to each other and that was that. At Brad’s deer-in-headlights expression, Claire shifted from foot to foot anxiously, twirled her hair around her finger. “Sorry,” she mumbled,, deflating slightly, and it hurt Brad to see her so dejected when he remembered how _vibrant_ she’d been in Boston. “Just wanted to check you were okay. I’ll just—” and at that she turned on her heel to walk back towards her proving dough. 

“No!” Brad said (a little too abruptly, immediately kicking himself for it when he sees how Claire’s shoulders tense). “I mean, no, it’s fine. Thanks for bein’ concerned about lil ole me, Saffitz.”

Claire turns back to him, a tight smile on her lips but the most sincere smile he’s seen from her in five years. “Well, someone has to,” she jibes back, her smile growing a little wider and looser, amusement alight in her eyes now that they’re falling back into their old pattern and losing herself in the moment. “Can’t have you wasting away on us, Leone. The test kitchen would cease to exist.” 

Brad cocks an eyebrow at her, his smile widening into one of pure joy and her heart stutters at the happiness she sees in his face and the thought that _she did that_. “Nah,” he says, shrugging, “I think the test kitchen’d be just fine.”

Claire bites her lip nervously and ducks her head as she says, “Brad, you keep this place going.”

Brad places the sheet trays on an empty space on a shelf and starts walking towards Claire, gesturing with his arms for her to turn and walk back towards her bread, and follows behind her. “I appreciate the sentiment, Saffitz. Whatcha makin’?” he asks, peering into the oven her bread was proving in (the bread was in a Dutch oven, and there was no way he was going to be able to see it, but she wasn’t about to tell him that).

“Bread,” she says softly, leaning back against a counter and fully letting her guard down in the test kitchen around Brad for probably the first time since she’d been there. “It’s super finicky though, so I have to keep an eye on it. The timings on the recipe seem good though, so it’s mostly just watching it to be absolutely sure.”

He chuckles slightly, and she’s momentarily transported back to that booth in Boston, Brad happy and chatty, slightly smaller and with less facial hair, a beer held loosely in his hand as he nudges his foot against hers. “Don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone describe bread as finicky before. Must be the Harvard in ya, Saffitz.” She sucks in a breath, Claire’s alma mater hadn’t come up in the test kitchen thus far, so Brad was the only one who knew she’d gone to Harvard, and his reference (albeit, indirectly) to _that night_ had her somewhat unsure of herself.

“Maybe you just haven’t been hanging around the right people, Leone,” she spoke, trying to matching his teasing tone but worrying she’d failed dramatically. Maybe she had, maybe she hadn’t but Brad’s next word sent her even more off-kilter than she already was. 

“Maybe.” 

It’s so simple, it is just a word, but that earnest way he’d said it, the way his eyes shone and bored into hers as he did expressed a rawness behind the word that didn’t match the tentative steps they’d made that night. The room suddenly felt foggy with an intimacy that Claire didn’t feel ready for, and a weight settled itself on her chest. She smiled back at Brad, weakly, averted her gaze from his and staggered towards the oven, distracting herself by checking on her bread. 

“Oh,” she says, somewhat surprised. “It’s done. Hey, Brad?”

From the corner of her eye she sees him shake himself a little to bring himself back into the present, and she finds herself wondering absently what he was thinking about. “Yeah, Claire?”

“Could you pass me that notepad and pen, please?”

“Sure I can, Saffitz.”

— — —

After that night, Brad and Claire strike up a hesitant friendship. They help each other out with recipes when they need it, chat amiably and banter back and forth with the rest of the group. Still, though, there’s no real acknowledgement from either party of the night they’d slept together, and neither makes a move to change that. 

It makes Claire uneasy, and she feels like she’s been ignoring the proverbial elephant in the room for far too long, but any time she tells herself she’s going to put on her big girl pants and talk to Brad about it, he smiles that easy smile that makes her heart stumble a little as it beats and he gives her a cheery “Hey, Claire!” and she can’t bring herself to shatter the vague comfort she finds in the friendship. 

She decides that sometimes ignorance really is bliss. 

She also refuses to acknowledge that she’s lying to herself.

— — —

Seven months after she and Brad started sharing a station, Claire thought they’d finally reached a level of friendship that she could deal with. Conversations with Brad were always easy and light, they always strayed away from heavy topics and definitely never mentioned the intimate details of their personal lives. If Claire had a date that night, it wouldn’t come up in conversation, and likewise, Brad never mentioned anything to her.

Claire thinks that she can deal with this, thinks that if they never progress beyond this point she’ll be absolutely fine with that (she won’t be; she’s a terrible liar and she knows she is but she was always very good at lying to herself). She likes working with Brad, likes that he makes her laugh and distracts her easily when a recipe is not quite where she wants it to be, perfectionist that she is, and she’s close to tearing her hair out. Claire also realises, startlingly, that she likes Brad. Not in a wistful, nostalgia sort of way like she’d liked him before, but in a he-makes-my-heart-stop sort of way. 

She doesn’t know what to do with that when she realises. 

Claire’s a person who needs time to decompress and process, but she struggles to process _that._ What’s she supposed to do with that? She can’t act on her feelings, it’s obvious Brad doesn’t feel the same way, always making pleasant conversation and joking with everyone in the test kitchen, she’s nothing special, not to Brad. Besides, they never talk about anything that _means_ anything. They talk about trivial things that she could care less about and she knows that transitioning from what they have now into something deeper could break the friendship completely, God knows it’s fragile enough to begin with given the foundation it’s built on. 

She resigns herself to just suppressing her feelings for Brad and continuing on as she always has. 

— — —

Brad’s been out of the test kitchen for two weeks on vacation. 

Claire misses him. She finds the silence across the workstation unnerving, misses Brad’s stories and goofy sense of humour, misses his consideration for everyone in the test kitchen, misses his vivacious personality filling the room. In the two and a half years she’s been working in the test kitchen, she and Brad have become a weird kind of close; she knows a whole manner of things about Brad, all stupid, random things she either knows from Brad telling her or from her observing it in him. 

Like that he doesn’t drink coffee because when he does he’s practically vibrating out of his skin, an uncomfortable onslaught of energy on his nervous system that fissures through his veins and sets him on edge, then when it fizzles out it leaves him exhausted, a shell of the Brad she lov— likes, _knows._ The last time he’d done that (out of politeness towards a guest in the test kitchen, bless him) Claire had told him to go home early and that she’d cover for him if anyone asked where he was. Brad thanked her profusely, bounded over to her station wrapped her in a tight hug that left her fighting for grip on reality when it was over and practically sprinting out of the kitchen with a fast-spoken, “I owe ya, Saffitz!”

Claire glances at Brad’s fermentation station every now and then, exhaling sharply every time and internally scolding herself for allowing her feelings for this ridiculous, wonderful man to spiral so far out of her control.

When Brad returns from vacation the next day, she notices that his tan is a few shades darker, his hair a little lighter, and his smile about five notches wider and more relaxed. He breezes into the test kitchen easily and with joy, greets everyone with exuberance and that boundless energy that’s just so characteristic of Brad and her lungs constrict at the sight of him, relief at seeing him again flooding through every inch of her. 

She pointedly ignores the knowing look that Carla’s giving her a few stations over, steadfastly avoids the raised eyebrow sent her way when Brad greets her with a hug and a gleeful, “Saffitz! How are you this fine day?” 

She huffs out a laugh, “Things are fine, Brad.” She doesn’t say that they’re much better now that he’s back. 

“Just _fine_? Claire, it’s _glorious_!”

Claire bites her tongue to stop herself from agreeing with him, rolls her eyes and turns away from Brad, looking down at the pastry she was working with to hide her blush. 

  
Claire has to avoid Carla for the rest of the day. 

— — —

A few days after Brad gets back from vacation, it’s just him and her alone in the test kitchen, something that’s become a somewhat regular occurrence, with Claire’s propensity to stay late and Brad’s refusal to let her walk to the subway alone (“It’s New York at night, Claire! I’ll be takin’ no chances.” She pretends she doesn’t hear the “not with you” that he didn’t say.) They’re both working quietly, the faded hum of the oven and the various clangs that come from their work pierces through the quiet and Claire’s sighs, feeling the stress of the day start to trickle out of the tension between her shoulders. 

“You okay there, Saffitz?” Brad asks, a smile quirking on the corners of his mouth and he pauses chopping a carrot to stare inquisitively at her, and Claire feels the air leave her lungs at the sight, because it’s Brad Leone, and more and more often these days she feels his full attention on her, and he has to much to give that it knocks her for six sometimes. It takes her back to her dorm room at Harvard, takes her back to his hands skimming her ribcage reverently, like he couldn’t believe he was lucky enough to be touching her. She clenches her eyes shut for a moment and then meets his uncharacteristically unwavering stare with one of her own.

She smiles, tightly, “I’m fine, Brad.”

He lets out a disbelieving chuckle, the expression on his face telling her he doesn’t believe her for a second. “You wanna try that again, Claire?” 

And, God, the way he says her name sometimes. He always says it like that when there’s something lighting in his eyes that she can’t place, something that looks suspiciously like he’s looking at her as though she hung the moon, but she knows that can’t be it. 

She breathes deep. “Yeah, I— just a rough day, Brad. I’ll be okay.”

Brad almost looks affronted at the resignation in her voice, and if she weren’t bone-deep exhausted she’d probably have laughed at his expression. “Now, Claire… that just won’t do.” His tone of voice has shifted dangerously close to mischievous, the light in his eyes too bright in his amusement, and Claire narrows her eyes at him, her heart rate increasing with the anxious anticipation suddenly clawing at the throat. 

“Brad…” she says lowly, warning in her voice. “Don’t.”

He feigns innocence, and that she does find it within herself to laugh at. “Don’t _what_ , Claire? I’m not doing anything.” She narrows her eyes more, and he laughs. 

Despite herself, the corners of her lips start pulling up into a smile (traitors). “You _know_ what Brad. You’re not doing anything _yet_.”

Brad hums, his eyes never leaving her as he starts inching towards the bag of flour that’s a little further from him on the counter, mischief dripping from his every movement. Claire realises just a second too late what he’s doing, not spluttering out a protest and reaching for the bag until the tips of Brad’s fingers are already brushing it. 

  
She didn’t stand a chance.

Before she can turn to run, Brad’s thrown flour over her, settling in her hair and turning it the shade of grey she’s been dyeing it to avoid. She swipes at her eyes to make sure flour doesn’t get into them and stares at Brad, mouth gaping open in shock. She’s silent for so long that Brad seems to start to doubt his actions, getting a little more nervous with every second that passes.

She intended to let him sweat it out for a few seconds longer, but she finds she can’t stop the amused screech of “Brad!” that slips from her lips. He looks delighted, pure joy emanating from him as he takes in the smile alight in her eyes. “I- wha— did you really just—”

“ _Yes_ , Claire,” he says emphatically, excitedly. “I _did_ just throw flour all over you. You’re welcome.”

“I’m welcome?” she raises a brow, “You want me to thank you for doing this?”

While Brad’s preening out a “why, yes, actually that’d be nice, Saffitz” she picks up the packet of flour, which was still relatively full given that Brad had only thrown a few handfuls at her, and moves closer and closer to Brad until they’re practically toe to toe, only inches apart. Brad, for possibly the first time in his life, appears to be speechless. He stutters out a, “Claire?” But she pays him no mind, smiling sweetly up at him as she reaches onto her tip toes, raises her arms above his head, and unceremoniously dumps the entire bag on him. 

Brad Leone looks ridiculous with a large pile of flour on his head, on his shoulders, with a shadow of flour all around him, turns out. Claire can’t stop laughing at the stunned look on his face, the shock reflected in the blue of his eyes. “Oh…” he says menacingly, stalking towards her and she squeaks, still laughing, stumbling back away from him. “You’ve done it now, Saffitz.” 

Half an hour, and a lot of wasted food, later, Claire and Brad are sat on the floor of the test kitchen, the sun long since set, assessing the carnage around them. “Jesus, Brad. The mess,” she chuckles, grimacing just slightly at the thought of how much they’re gonna have to clean up. 

He nudges her shoulder with hers, turning his head to look at her and forcing her to do the same. “We’ll take it in turns, you go clean yourself up first, and I’ll start with… _this_ mess, and then we’ll switch.” He stands, turns, offers his hand to her to help her out. “Sound good?”

She takes his hand, feeling how effortlessly he pulls her to her feet. “Yep, sounds great.”

It actually doesn’t take as long as Claire thought it would to clean up the mess they’d left behind after the impromptu food fight. While Claire was in the restroom attached to the test kitchen cleaning up, Brad had gotten a decent chunk of cleaning done _and_ made a pizza for them both with some leftover dough that was in the walk-in. 

  
She cocks an eyebrow at him when she sees it. “What?” He says. “I got hungry. All this cleaning’s hard work, Claire. I’m a growing boy, I need sustenance.” 

A laugh bubbles up in her throat. “Brad, if you grow much more you’ll go through the ceiling.

She delights in the vaguely offended laugh he lets out in response. They leave far later than either of them planned on that night. 

(Claire finds out later that Brad missed a date that night). 

— — —

In early 2016, Sauci Saffitz flies from Cape Cod to visit her daughter in New York. She visits the test kitchen during her stay and is suitably charmed by the kitchen and the people that work there, much like Claire, she’s pretty instantly enamoured with the place. Molly makes fast friends with her, and Sauci spends a lot of that day with Molly and Carla at their station, observing her daughter and the man she shares a station with (who she hasn’t met yet, suspiciously) and noting how Claire acts around him. 

Later in the day, Brad Leone goes bounding over to Sauci, sticking his hand out to her and saying, “Mrs. S! My most sincere apologies, ma’am, I would have introduced myself sooner but your daughter—” (he says that with a pointed glance over his shoulder at Claire) “—has only just informed me you’re here. It’s a pleasure to meet you.” 

Sauci puts her hand in Brad’s, shakes it, responds with, “It’s nice to meet you Brad,” and watches her daughter from just behind Brad, sees the amusement in her eyes at Brad speaking so formally and the adoration she held with every part of her, all directed at the man she’d just met. 

Sauci, Molly, and Carla all share a knowing look at the entire display, Molly turning away and muttering something that sounded suspiciously like, “so in love” as she went. 

That evening, Sauci turns to Claire and says, “I liked that one.” 

Claire startles, “What? What one?” 

“That Brad Leone, I liked him. He seems like he’d be good for you.”   
  
Claire ducks her head, picking at the sleeve of the large, old, faded hoodie she’s wearing (Brad’s, though she wouldn’t admit that to her mother, especially not _now_ ), and mumbles, “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” with a fiery blush blooming on her cheeks. 

“Sure you don’t, honey.” 

— — —

Claire is sick. Like… super sick. 

She’s so congested that her head is pounding, she can’t breathe through her nose (gross), and she simultaneously has a very high fever and is freezing cold. Fantastic. Somehow, she has the wherewithal to call into work and inform them that she is, in fact, extensively ill and will not be able to make it into work that day, and probably for a few days following that, if today’s anything to go off. She just barely works her way through the phone call, shaking by the time she hangs up, her head aching so much she squeezes her eyes shut, pulls the sheets up to her neck, curls up into a ball and falls back into unconsciousness. 

She’s in and out of being actually asleep all day, forcing herself to eat through the nausea a few times because she knows she’ll never get better if she doesn’t eat something and drinking lots of fluids, but she doesn’t think she ever fully wakes up. There a chunks of time she knows she must have been somewhat awake because there’s evidence that she was, but has absolutely no recollection of it happening. For example, ten minutes ago she woke up on the couch with the TV humming mindlessly in the background and absolutely no memory of moving there, 99% sure she’d fallen asleep in her room. Clearly not. 

A few hours after the whole couch debacle (where she’s stayed since, hasn’t materialised back in bed like she half-expected herself to), she hears a knock at the door. Or thinks she does. Honestly, she has no idea if she does or not, is halfway between thinking it’s part of some elaborate fever dream or a trick from above to get her to move her intensely aching limbs and answer the door. The knock (or not-knock) sounds again, this time a voice accompanying it, and then she’s sure she’s in the middle of a fever dream, because there’s _no way_ Brad’s on the other side of her apartment door. 

“Claire,” he says, his voice soft but just loud enough to be heard from where she’s laying on the couch (and, honestly, Brad’s control over the volume at which he speaks is enough in itself to convince that she’s not currently in reality). She forces herself up anyway, groaning as her entire body screams out in pain as protest. When Claire opens the door, she looks smaller than she usually does, her grey streaked hair half-in and half-out of her bun, her face ghostly-pale, her skin tone pallid and a blanket wrapped tight around her torso. 

  
To her surprise, Brad actually is on the other side of the door. He smiles at her, wide and happy, but she can she concern lingering behind his eyes. “Hey, half-sour,” he says, calling her that new nickname that had come about in an It’s Alive! Episode that hasn’t aired yet that she pretends to hate. 

Dutifully, she rolls her eyes at the name (even though it hurts), and opens the door a little wider, mumbling about how it’s cold as Brad brushes past her into the apartment at Claire’s invitation. “Brad,” she mutters, a little pathetically, “what’re you doing here?” She’d be worried the question sounded abrupt if she didn’t already know how pitiful every word she said sounded. 

“Word around the kitchen is you called in sick today and I just wanted to check you were alright. I brought some stuff, too, so you weren’t—” he abruptly stops, and Claire barely registers the narrowing of his eyes and the look of pure disbelief settling over his features. “Uh, half-sour, is that _my_ hoodie you’re wearing?”

Claire’s eyebrows furrow as she stutters out a “what—”, looks down and sees that it is in fact Brad’s hoodie she’s wearing, falling at mid-thigh as it always has, looking a little worse for wear and paired with leggings and fluffy socks. 

“It _is_ my hoodie! I’ve been looking for that thing for years, Claire, and all this time…” he trails off, Claire at this point leaning miserably against the back of her couch flushing a deep scarlet (which is good and bad, she supposes because at least her furious blush is warming her up a little). “All this time, _you’d_ stolen it!”

  
Claire looks as affronted as she can while being as drastically sick as she is. “Stole it?” she repeats, “No, Brad, you _left_ it.” If Claire was in a more stable frame of mind, she would’ve noticed sooner that this conversation they were having now was the only time in the four years since they’d met again that either one of them had truly mentioned the night they slept together. 

“I did _not_!”

“You did _too_ ,” she argues back, nervously pulling at the huge sleeves. “I woke up and you were gone but this thing—” she gestures to the hoodie hanging off of her, “—was on the floor!”

Brad’s mouth opens as if to respond, but then he pauses, a furrow appearing between his brows as he thinks about what she said. Eventually: “Holy shit, half-sour, you’re _right_. I r‘member I was super warm so I left my hoodie when I went to buy you some breakfast an’ all that stuff and then when I had to leave I never picked it up.” 

“Mhmm!” she hums pointedly, shooting Brad a triumphant look. Finally, Claire’s brain catches up with the conversation and she freezes, shocked still by the reality of it all. They’re _talking_ about it, _acknowledging_ it. It’s been almost a decade since it happened and, really, it’s borderline miraculous that they haven’t somehow brought it up at some point in the last four years; it’s actually pretty impressive how well they suppressed the memory and ignored it. 

“Well, uh,” Brad claps his hands, bouncing anxiously on the balls of his feet, the conversation having caught up with him. 

Suddenly, he jolts forward, moving towards her with a slight stutter in his steps and his arms out in front of him, as if to stop her from falling. It very abruptly registers in her mind that she’s swaying, that the room is spinning and she’s _very_ dizzy; this is the most movement she’s done all day and it’s definitely catching up with her now and she white-knuckle grips the back of the couch for balance. “Jesus, Saffitz!” Brad exclaims, placing two steadying hands on her upper arms, the warmth of which seeps through the hoodie and heats her skin, making her shiver with the relief of heat when she feels so cold. “Christ, c’mon,” he murmurs, guiding her around the couch and making her lay down on it. 

Once she’s somewhat settled on the couch, curled into the foetal position and probably looking as pitiful as she feels, Brad places a gentle hand on the top of her head and mumbles concernedly to himself about how hot her forehead is, while Claire mindlessly notices that his hands are much rougher now than they were when he was 22. Which makes sense. 

  
Claire very rarely thinks about it, that night. Doesn’t allow herself to open the floodgates but now they’ve been opened… it’s there, lingering, lurking at the corner of her consciousness and she cant stop herself thinking about it. 

And she’s sick, so her defences are compromised. (That’s a poor excuse and she knows it). 

Suddenly Claire loses the welcome heat of Brad’s calloused hand against her forehead and her eyes flicker open (she hadn’t realised they’d closed, if she’s honest) to see Brad walking away from her. A whimper escapes her throat before she can stop it. She blames her ‘compromised defences’ again. 

“I’m just makin’ ya somethin’ to eat, half-sour. You just relax.”

Claire must have fallen asleep because she wakes up to Brad rubbing her arm to wake her up. “Hey,” he says in a voice so soft she didn’t know Brad was capable of it. The lights in her apartment have been dimmed, and she thinks her blanket might have been tucked tighter around her. She doesn’t mention it and neither does Brad. “Sorry to wake ya up, but I’ve got some soup here and I think it’ll do you some good to eat, it has garlic in it.” 

She snorts out a weak laugh, “‘Course it does.” 

She has to ignore the proud look on Brad’s face at making her laugh or her heart will squeeze in her chest and she’s in enough pain as it is, she doesn’t need to start digging into her deeply suppressed feelings for the man currently presenting her with a bowl of homemade soup. 

Her heart clenches anyway. She _loves_ this man. 

She doesn’t say that. “Thanks, Brad,” she murmurs instead, moving into a sitting position, half so it would be easier to eat and half so Brad could sit on the other side of the sofa. 

When the soup’s finished and the movie they’d put on is just getting dramatic, Claire starts shivering, the blanket wrapped around her body not doing enough to make her feel warm. Against his better judgement, Brad mutters “c’mere” and tugs her into his side. At first, Claire tenses and resists, but she’s exhausted and freezing and it’s _Brad_. She curls into him and buries her face in his sleeve, inhaling the pure, comforting scent of Brad, the one that’d left her nine years ago when she washed her sheets and the hoodie. She feels herself calm down. 

Later, when there’s a lull in the action of the movie, Claire’s mouth speaks without her brain’s permission, and she freezes in shock as soon as the words leave her lips. “Why didn’t you leave a phone number?” 

Brad stills, his every muscle tenses. “What? When?” 

In for a penny, in for a pound, she thinks, figuring it’ll just be easy to keep going than try to take the words back now. “Nine years ago… your note. You didn’t leave a phone number.” 

Brad shifts slightly, jostling her as she’s still nestled into him. He swallows hard, half his body moving with it and he finally turns to look at her. The expression on his face, the wet sheen to his eyes and the sorrow that mars the blue is enough to make her regret asking. The air between them is charged and heavy with words unsaid, a static crackling through the room. “I—” he starts, but has to swallow around the lump in his throat when his voice splinters slightly. “I meant to,” and it seems like such a lame excuse but there’s a heavy sincerity weighing down the words that she can’t dismiss, he seems so genuinely regretful and sad, and her heart breaks because seeing Brad Leone with tear tracks on his cheeks is enough to break her in two. 

“Really, I— I did. But… you know me, Saffitz, I ain’t good at payin’ attention to what I’m doing at the best of times and you were… God, Claire, you were _naked_ and you looked so peaceful, so _beautiful_ I swear my heart stopped for a second and then before I knew it I had to go else I was gonna miss my train and my mom’d kill me so I left quickly. I forgot my hoodie and I forgot to leave my number too.” Brad finishes speaking and Jesus, he’s stolen everything from her now. Her breath, her heart… you name it and it’s his because all of her belongs to Brad Leone even if he doesn’t know it yet. But Claire needs time to process what he just said, the weight of what it all means lingering between them and Claire doesn’t know what to say, can’t think at all yet and then a loud boom from the TV startles her, flames licking up the side of a building when she turns to look at it. 

Then, they both turn to the TV to carry on watching the movie, the moment buried deep with their feelings. Brad murmurs in an emotion-thick voice, “I never stopped kickin’ myself for forgettin’ that, Claire.” And neither of them mention it again.

As she’s drifting off to sleep, she thinks ( _knows_ ) she feels Brad’s lips press tenderly into her hair and she almost cries at the raw intimacy and affection in the gesture.

— — —

When Claire slowly and groggily comes back to herself the next morning, she immediately notices that she’s alone, and in bed. The curtains a drawn and there’s a dim light filtering through the room, and Claire thinks she smells something sweet but can’t be sure because she can’t really smell anything right now. She pauses, her brain catching up with her surroundings and suppresses a fond smile at the thought that Brad carried her to bed, made sure she was comfortable (he _tucked her in_ , sweet man), and left something sweet for breakfast (she _thinks_ , if what she thinks she smells is something she’s actually smelling). 

Claire, still wearing Brad’s hoodie (which smells like Brad from where she’d leaned on him, and she’s taken aback by the deja-vu of the moment for a second), pads slowly out into the kitchen, still feeling positively Shitty™, but marginally better, the pounding in her head fading into a dull ache and half the ability to breathe through her nose returned. 

The kitchen’s much colder than her room is because of the hard flooring, but she forces herself to keep walking towards the counter, where a brown paper bag, mug, and piece of paper were. Once again, upon peering into the bag, she finds pie, and little packets of sugar and creamer even though she knows Brad _knows_ how she takes her coffee now (that is, if she can’t get iced coffee, her go-to). The note is simple, short, just tells her that he had a meeting he couldn’t get out of so he had to leave, but that he’d be back later to check she was alright and to make sure her fever had gone down because she was still warmer than he’d like when he check this morning. 

He signs it ‘Brad Leone’ with little doodles at the bottom of the page like he did all those years ago. 

She has to fight back a sudden onslaught of tears, pushing her feelings down into that abyss they’d resided in for almost a decade. 

Brad comes over that night just like he said he would. They eat, watch a movie, slip into that easy friendship they’ve had for so long, pleasant though meaningless conversation and laughter. 

They ignore everything that happened the night before; they add it to the list. 

— — —

January 2018 is really, really cold. Claire’s the type to get cold easily, she has a theory that it’s because she’s always in warm rooms with one or more ovens on so she’s very rarely exposed to cold temperatures. So, despite being wrapped up in about seven thousand layers, Claire’s shivering, teeth chattering as she walks into the bar that the test kitchen staff have commandeered for the evening. 

Claire slips into the booth next to Brad, in the seat he’s saved for her. His arm immediately wraps around her shoulder and starts rubbing her arm to help warm her up and she shoots him a grateful smile, already feeling warmer now that she can leech his body heat. 

Carla and Molly are sat opposite them, both of them alternating between sharing knowing looks with each other and staring pointedly at Brad and Claire’s easy intimacy (they’d fallen into it sometime after her and Brad had a heart to heart when she was sick last year, it had just happened, much like many things in their dysfunctional relationship, neither of them acknowledged it, and if it fits the trend, neither will for another three years). 

  
At some point, Claire starts leaning her full weight on Brad, melting into his side and before she even really realises she’s moved, her head is resting on his shoulder. He doesn’t mention it, just jerks his shoulder playfully so her head is jolted and laughs at the disgruntled expression on her face. “Watch it, Leone,” she warns, amusement laced in her every word, and Brad chuckles, turning back to the lively conversation around them. 

Something shifts between them. She doesn’t notice it happening but once it does it’s so momentous that it’s palpable, a weight settling on her chest, a restless energy overcoming her that she doesn’t know what to do with. Brad notices too, starts shifting and fumbling more, his leg bouncing so hard under the table he’s well on the way to drilling a hole through the floor. He announces that the next round’s on him, everyone cheers, she gets up to let him and Andy (who offered to help carry) out of the booth.

When they get back, Brad slides a drink over to her. “Beer okay?” he asks, his unwavering gaze on hers raw and nervous. 

For several moments she’s back in Boston in 2008 and she smiles softly at him, nods and replies, “Beer’s perfect. Thanks Brad.” And that was that. 

Conversation around them continues, debate about food and about anything and everything and Claire smiles widely to herself, so overcome with joy at this patchwork family she’s found, this corner of her life nestled into a bar in Manhattan, all laughing and talking and in spirited debate. She loves them, loves this atmosphere, is so happy with how things are going. 

She looks up at Brad at the same time that Brad looks down at her. Her smile is one of adoration, one of love. He mirrors her, nudging her foot with his. 

A few more hours pass, and the group begins to disperse. People have kids and pets and a whole manner of things to get back to, some people are at work tomorrow and it’s eleven already, by the time they got home they’ll be lucky if they manage five hours of sleep. 

  
Claire and Brad, for as awful at communicating as they are, seem as though they’re finally on the same page. They linger as everyone bids goodbye, hanging back, hands brushing behind Brad’s back and sharing secret smiles (that everyone sees but pretends not to). Once they’re alone, their hands link together, and when Claire steps out into the bitter cold of the night she doesn’t feel as frozen as she did earlier. 

She’s feeling reckless tonight. 

“Hey, Brad?” she says, in a way that in any other situation would’ve been abrupt but was really the only way to segue into this next stage of them at this exact moment. Brad has this goofy, delighted grin on his lips and she doesn’t think she’s ever seen Brad happier than he looks in this moment. 

“Yeah Claire?”

“You wanna come over to my place?”

Brad kisses her with her back pressed against the bar they just left, unknowing towards the group of eyes all brimming with glee from across the street, the inexplicable family they’d found all so happy because if there were ever two people who were _meant to be_ , it was Claire Saffitz and Brad Leone. Brad mumbles “lead the way Saffitz” against her lips and she can’t help the joyous laughter that bubbles out of her. 

Almost exactly a decade after the fact, echoing that first night, Brad and Claire head to Claire’s place, touching constantly. 

— — —

The next morning, Claire wakes up surrounded by all things Brad, her body entwined with his, the sheets tangled up around them and she’s sure she’s never felt happier than she does right then, staring into Brad Leone’s sleepy blue eyes and murmuring, “Morning,” against his chest. 

“Morning,” he whispers back, pressing a reverent kiss against her forehead. 

**Author's Note:**

> oh my god i went on a real journey with this one. it started out nice and short, super peaceful and calm, just to get me back into the swing of writing after my basically two-year hiatus and then this thing just came out of NOWHERE. i feel like i need to recover. 
> 
> that being said, i can only apologise for the many, many mistakes that are probably all over this fic, i'll try and correct them as i overanalyse the whole thing over the next few days. 
> 
> feedback is appreciated but is certainly not a requirement <3


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